Our Flag Means Death 2.06 "Calypso's Birthday"

Me sitting down to read new big-brained metas about blorbos from my shows written by the tumblr girlies

it’s december 1 where’s the christmas tail kitten bring him to me

i have to do EVERYTHING around here

the thing that sucks is that people love saying sleep early is good etc etc and yeah it is. I've seen some benefits before. but I think it sucks to ignore that late night is the only time with any freedom. I think it sucks to not acknowledge the dread in waking up and it's a work day again

This is just to say

Happy holidays

ho ho holy shit it’s december first (1st)

It’s that time of year to dust off

The Mystrade Christmas Generator!

Thanks to @mottlemoth we have a prompt generator just for the holiday season. Click the link above and you’ll get a scenario, bit of dialogue, words to include. Hope this helps get the creative holiday juices/punch flowing.

🎄❄️🎄❄️🎄❄️🎄❄️

Maurice (James Ivory, 1987) set photography: Rupert Graves as Alec Scudder waiting at the boathouse.

I’ve always loved this shot, but for many years I only had a microscopic newsprint copy. There’s also a gorgeous variant (impatient Alec in profile).

"Acceptable Violence" in OFMD Season 2: deconstructing violence within the context of the show's parameters

I've been doing a lot of thinking about violence and the second season of Our Flag Means Death. I've come to some conclusions that I would like to share, but I would like to preface my thoughts with a disclaimer or two:

I did not like the second season, for myriad reasons, some of which I will outline here. But I am not here to attack you if you liked the season. I am not here to make commentary on who you are as a person or your personal taste if you liked the season. My not liking the season does not mean you can't like the season. In short: my dislike of the season is not about you at all! Also, this is not an academic paper. Which doesn't mean I might not do that in the future, but for now this is just an assembly of analysis and thoughts. If you do not care to read analytical criticism of something you deeply enjoyed? I invited you to scroll onward. If you liked the second season but would like to hear some of the reasons why many, including myself, didn't - carry on! The rest is under the cut.

With regards to the show writing Ed stereotypically, I hated how the second season discarded "Ed is brilliant and outsources much of the direct violence of pirating" from the first season in favor of the second season's "Ed is crap at everything except brutally dealing violence directly; Izzy is the brains of the operation".

It's not just that Ed was written stereotypically in the second season; it's that the writers discarded their own established canon to do so.

you're in the habit of denying yourself things.

if someone asked you directly, you would say that you love a little treat. you like iced coffee and getting the cookie. you drink juice out of a fancy cup sometimes, and often do use your candles until they gutter out helplessly.

but you hesitate about buying the 20 dollar hand mixer because, like. you could just use your arms. you weren't raised rich. you don't get to just spend the 20 dollars (remember when that could cover lunch?), at least - you don't spend that without agonizing over it first, trying to figure out the cost-benefits like you are defending yourself in front of a jury. yes, this rice cooker could seriously help you. but you do know how to make stovetop rice and it really isn't that hard. how many pies or brownies would you actually make, in order to make that hand mixer worthwhile?

what's wild is that if the money was for a friend, it would already be spent. you'd fork over 40 without blinking an eye, just to make them happy. the difference is that it's for you, so you need to justify it.

and it sneaks in. you ration yourself without meaning to - you don't finish the pint of ice cream, even though you want to. the next time you go to the store, you say ah, i really shouldn't, and then you walk away. you save little bits of your precious things - just in case. sometimes you even go so far as putting that one thing in your shopping cart. and then just leaving it there, because maybe-one-day, but not right now, there's other stuff going on.

you do self-care, of course. but you don't do it more than like, 3 days in a row. after that it just feels a little bit over-the-edge. like. you can't live in decadence, the economy is so bad right now, kid.

so you don't buy the rice cooker. you can-and-will spend the time over the stove. you can withstand the little sorrows. denial and discipline are practically synonyms. and you're not spoiled.

it's just - it's not always a rice cooker. sometimes it is a person or a job or a hug. sometimes it is asking for help. sometimes it is the summer and your college degree. sometimes it is looking down at scabbed knees and feeling a strange kind of falling, like you can't even recognize the girl you used to be. sometimes it is your handprint looking unsteady.

sometimes it is tuesday, and you didn't get fired, and you want to celebrate. but what is it you like, even? you search around your little heart and come up empty. you're so used to denying that all your desires draw a blank.

oh fuck. see, this is the perfect opportunity. if you had a mixer, you'd make a cake.

[ID: A web weaving with excerpts of text that read:

AU meet-cute in which they're both nude models for a local art class

I’ve seen a few takes on the whole “Is the writing actually bad or are you trying to order a milkshake from the hardware store?” genre expectations thing for OFMD s2 and I’m gonna add my own.

Yes, I know it’s billed as a lighthearted pirate romcom. And s1 was just that. But s1 also had some incredibly solid character arcs and thematic elements and layers and so much depth that were shaped by some more serious dramatic bits here and there.

I wasn’t expecting that going into it. In s1, I was expecting to go into the hardware store for hardware, as anyone would, because it’s advertised as a hardware store. But then I got there and discovered that this particular hardware store also happened to sell milkshakes. I didn’t expect milkshakes from a hardware store, especially not really good milkshakes since that seems like it might be a tough thing to sell together, but they were able to keep the hardware out of the milkshakes and vice versa, so it was great. You didn’t have to order a milkshake if milkshakes weren’t your thing and you never planned on ordering one since it’s ultimately a hardware store. You could just come for hardware. You could also really just come for the milkshakes if you wanted to, but it was still really clear that we were getting that milkshake from a hardware store.

And then s2 started and the hardware store spent three episodes really expanding on the milkshake sales. To the point it was like wow, if I hadn’t been told this was a hardware store, I’d almost think it was a milkshake shop. And since it was ultimately meant to be a hardware store, they clearly had to try and sell some hardware, but that seemed like it ended up being a little hard to make room for with how much of the store had been filled with milkshakes, so suddenly there are some milkshakes made with nails and screws, and there are toolboxes and lumber with milkshakes spilled on them. And idk maybe they should’ve served fewer milkshakes if they still were gonna try and sell that much hardware, because these things really don’t always mix and now we can’t really use either of them like that. But still, they just kept making more and more and more milkshakes until the blenders just exploded and there’s just this gigantic milkshake mess everywhere.

So at the onset of e4 it’s like okay, yeah, I have faith that this hardware store will definitely clean up the milkshakes because they’re clearly all over this place; it can hardly even be a hardware store til the milkshakes are cleaned up. But then besides a handful of paper towels that are used to clean up a little tiny puddle of milkshake, everyone just… resumes work selling hardware? Despite the fact that they’re still just walking around in the gigantic milkshake mess??

And that just keeps going til there’s only one episode left and it’s like geez idk why they still haven’t cleaned up the milkshakes I hope they can somehow. That seems tough with so little time left, but this place started as really great hardware store that sold quality milkshakes, so maybe they can pull it off.

But then instead, the CEO of the hardware store decides to unexpectedly murder one of the hardware store employees and says it was a kindness because said employee was just so sticky from the milkshakes that never got cleaned up. Which doesn’t seem like a valid reason AT ALL? and even in a messy, milkshake-covered hardware store, that WASN’T something anyone would typically expect to see?? Plus it still did NOTHING to clean up the milkshakes??

And a lot of us are left just asking “i don’t understand, why did no one clean up the milkshakes???” and for some reason, the response to that often seems to be “hardware stores don’t sell milkshakes”. No, they usually don’t, but this one did. None of us would have ever tried to order a milkshake if it hadn’t been established that this specific hardware store has always sold them, and we’re a little concerned that it’s still just covered in them.

It was also super confusing that the hardware store locked its doors and stuck an “out of business forever” sign up while also still planning to open again like usual but said that if they don’t, at least everyone got a happy ending.

Like… um I really don’t think they did and either way I’m a little wary about shopping at this hardware store again.